Join JASNA-NJ on July 20th at 2pm on Zoom for a live Q&A with Hilary Davidson, author of Dress in the Age of Jane Austen: Regency Fashion and Jane Austen’s Wardrobe. You may register here at this link.
Empire waists, sprigged muslin, Hessian boots, and bonnets, bonnets, and more bonnets. The Grecian silhouette of the Regency is as indelible upon the imagination of historical fashionistas as it was brief. In Austen’s works—from Henry Tilney’s reflections on muslins, to Fanny Price’s amber cross, to Lydia Bennet’s strong opinions about bonnets—fashion is a subtle but notable feature of Austen’s depiction of her characters.
The dress and textile historian, curator, and archeologist Hilary Davidson, Chair of the MA Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory Museum Practice at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York is one of the leading experts on Regency fashion today. She has also trained as a bespoke shoemaker and is a skilled and meticulous hand-sewer. For more information on Davidson, her website provides a detailed a fascinating account of her many travels, careers, and academic degrees. These include (by no means a comprehensive list) her roles as curator of fashion and decorative arts at the Museum of London to working on a PhD in Archaeology at La Trobe University, Melbourne; work as a a freelance curator, historian, broadcaster, teacher, lecturer, consultant and designer; and her extensive teaching including at the University of Southampton, Central St Martins, the University of Cambridge, the University of Glasgow, New York University London, The American University Paris, Fashion Design Studio TAFE Sydney and the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), Sydney.
As well as writing books which have excited Janeites outside of academia as well as those within the academy, she has also been featured on such notable podcasts as The Rest Is History. Davidson’s work displays not only fascinating images and analysis of the gentry and ton’s style of dress (including Jane Austen’s surviving pelisse), but also showcases the lives and clothing of people from all levels of Regency society.
See you there! (And no pressure to impress Beau Brummell in your dress, it is over Zoom after all).
Jane Austen Society of North America - New Jersey Region 